You have to give progressives credit. They’re nothing if not thorough. When an opportunity to limit the Second Amendment presented itself in the Sandy Hook massacre, regardless how tasteless it was to exploit that opportunity, they went full bore toward their goal.

Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced sweeping so-called “assault weapons” ban legislation this week that would place unprecedented restrictions on individuals’ rights to own, use, sell and even pass along already owned firearms to family members. But given where things stand now in the polls and political atmosphere, that legislation will go nowhere.

But the Constitution and the will of the people matter little to a progressive with an opportunity.

If they were at all interested in the democracy they routinely claim to champion, they would accept the will of voters and engage in an effort to change minds and the Constitution to reflect their wishes. But much like a three-card Monte street hustler, they pursue the debate over this proposed legislation merely to draw our attention away from what they really seek to do.

While the media focused on Sen. Feinstein’s legislation and President Obama’s dog-and-pony show – complete with children for props and “executive initiatives” that amount to no more than a to-do list for himself –, the real progressive attack on the Second Amendment churns on beneath the radar.

Progressive politicians across the country are attempting to launch a stealth war against gun manufacturers, trying to harm them financially because they can’t legislatively.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter has the city moving to divest its pension fund from weapons and ammunitions companies in an attempt to pressure them to agree to more controls on their businesses. But Nutter isn’t alone, a growing list of progressive politicians from across the country are using their workers’ pensions, their retirement savings, like chips in a game of high-stakes poker.

By pulling, or threatening to pull, hundreds of millions of dollars in investments from manufacturers, it threatens to take stock prices artificially low. They’re willing to play politics with the retirement of their workers in order to advance their agenda. But the full-frontal assault on their stock price isn’t the only stealth avenue they’re seeking.

Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel, mayor of the murder capital of the world, is taking a second line of attack by putting pressure on banks to stop their financial involvement with weapons manufactures until they capitulate to the progressive will.

Emanuel, the president’s former chief of staff, wouldn’t dare make such a move if he didn’t have the blessing of the White House.

Time will tell how well this will work, but the tactic of ignoring the will of the people to advance their agenda is nothing new to progressives. When they can’t get what they want through the electoral process, progressives have no qualms about circumventing the express will of their constituents through lawsuits, activist judges or flat-out harassment.

For years, liberals have sought to silence Rush Limbaugh, to remove him from the radio. They tried offering competing programming, but that proved as fruitful as Betamax every time it’s been tried. They’ve toyed with the idea of reinstating the ironically named “fairness doctrine” to force him off the air, but that idea went nowhere. So they’ve adopted the tactic of harassing companies that advertise on his show, trying to chase them away in the hopes of silencing him through threats and intimidation.

The only step missing from the progressive playbook is the court – almost always the last place they turn when the people flatly refuse to give them their way. Expect an attempt to subvert this soon.

Progressives are never content to win an argument, election or debate, nor would they even be capable if they were honest about their agenda. Instead they focus on the long war, small pieces and coordinated, seemingly disparate actions on different tracks and never stop until they reach their goal. Meanwhile, Republicans are busy contradicting one another, capitulating and/or fighting to be the Democratic Media Complex’s flavor of the week.

In coming weeks and months, we will see still more back-channel tactics, arm-twisting and varying degrees of blackmail and threats employed as more and more progressive groups with more and more liberal money behind them fall in line to do their part to attempt to chisel away at the Second Amendment.

All the while Republicans will go on TV, take abuse while making their case, find support for their principles in the polls…and lose.

President Reagan kept a plaque on the wall in the Oval Office that read, “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he does not mind who gets the credit.” It’s a lesson Republicans have forgotten, and a lesson progressives have learned all too well.